Barrymore, Lionel

(1878-1954)

   The oldest son of Maurice and Georgiana Drew Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore was born in Philadelphia. He apprenticed at the Arch Street Theatre, under the management of his grandmother, Mrs. John Drew, and appeared with her in The Rivals and The Road to Ruin. In roles of varying size, Barrymore acted in The Bachelor's Baby (1895), Mary Pennington, Spinster (1896), Squire Kate (1896), Cumberland '61 (1897), Uncle Dick (1898), and Honorable John Grigsby (1898). After a small role in James A. Herne's Sag Harbor (1900), Barrymore played an Italian organ grinder opposite his uncle, John Drew. In The Mummy and the Humming Bird (1902), he established himself as a master of richly drawn character roles. Augustus Thomas wrote a substantial part for Barrymore in The Other Girl (1903), followed by the title role in J. M. Barrie's one-act Pantaloon (1905). In 1906, he left the stage to live in France with his first wife, Doris Rankin.

   Like his brother John, Lionel Barrymore preferred to pursue an interest in painting, but within a few years he returned to the United States and again took up his acting career in films, beginning in 1912, and on the Broadway stage, scoring notable successes in The Copperhead (1917), and costarring with his brother in Peter Ibbetson (1917) and The Jest (1919). These were followed by solo successes in The Claw (1921) and Laugh, Clown, Laugh! (1923), but when he attempted Macbeth in 1921, produced by Arthur Hopkins with scene designs by Robert Edmond Jones, he was not well-received. Barrymore's few remaining stage appearances—in The Piker (1925), Taps (1925), and Man or Devil (1925)—could not save those plays, so he turned exclusively to films, acting in almost 200 and winning an Academy Award for A Free Soul (1931). Much of his later career was spent in a wheelchair as the result of arthritis and a fall on a movie set, although this did not prevent him from giving strong performances as crusty Dr. Gillespie in the 1940s Dr. Kildare film series and in such screen classics as Grand Hotel (1932), Dinner at Eight* (1933), Treasure Island (1934), Camille (1936), Captains Courageous (1937), On Borrowed Time* (1939), It's a Wonderful Life (1946), A Duel in the Sun (1946), and Key Largo* (1948), among others.